2008: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
I’m finally back, fortified and emboldened by a much-needed break in rural Germany, away from the computer screen/internet/decks/clubs etc. It gave me some time to reflect on the past 12 months, which disastrous from a personal perspective but much more positive on a musical level. Here, for what it’s worth and off the top of my head, are the good, the bad and the ugly 0f 08. I’ll be posting a full list of my favourite singles, albums and compilations sometime this week. Here’s hoping 09 is as rewarding…
The Good:
The Ostgut/Berghain axis – the club, the label, the albums, the DJs
Hardwax’s brilliant store and mail order service
The vinyl format for enduring yet another tough year and still sounding better than any other
The mnml ssg podcast series - watch out RA!
Steffi and Dettmann’s podcasts for RA
Bloc for messy fun and an inspirational line up
Rob Hood – you can’t keep a good minimalist down
Juan Atkins’ live shows for finally realizing his dream of Model 500 becoming `a black Kraftwerk’
Redshape for releasing three radically different records in one year
Infinitestatemachine for its refreshing honesty
Aroy Dee, Delta Funktionen, Newworldaquarium and the whole Delsin/M<O<S/Ann Aimee group
Sandwell District killing it with every release
Deetron, Dettmann and Hood for reinvigorating my faith in the mix CD
Discovering the Pom Pom series
Cassy the DJ and Cassy the producer
The return of Substance – check his remix of Tadeo
Petar Dundov - the East is rising again
Detroit artists Patrice Scott, Keith Worthy, Omar S and Delano Smith for making and releasing great deep house
Larry Heard - a quarter of a century on, he still sounds great
New school European producers Peter Van Hoesen, Samuli Kemmpi, The Parallel and Add Noise
Alex Cortex’s ability to produce a bewildering range of styles and sounds
Sleeparchive’s fixation with atom smashing
James T Cotton/D’Marc Cantu/Crème Jak for compelling variants on the jacking Chicago sound
Dedbeat’s live shows with Tikiman
Andy Stott, Claro Intelecto and Modern Love’s stellar
Alden Tyrrell for coming out of self-enforced, early retirement
Clone for re-releasing obscure and hard to find classics legitimately
Smallville eclipsing its mother label Dial
Convextion and Donnacha Costello's midas touch(es)
Portable, Move D and Xdb’s spellbinding grooves
Osborne, a pop genius trapped in a house producer’s body
Eevolute, Irdial, Baby Ford and Playhouse represses
The Bad:
The album format failed to impress
Falling vinyl sales
The Government’s draconian, shortsighted and cackhanded approach to licensing laws in Ireland- 2.30am is when most other European cities are just getting going Substandard equipment and sound in clubs – if this is your attitude why bother putting on an event at all?
Bland minimal morphing into even blander deep house and the frenzy surrounding that development
The seemingly unending fascination with Ricardo Villalobos’ k-fuelled, ambling, ridiculously self-indulgent compositions
The end of Cybernetic Broadcasting
The closure of Neuton
The end of Electric City
Most of the print music media’s decline into an unofficial outpost for the PR industry
PRs infiltrating music forums and pretending to be fans with ‘information’
Blogging ‘authorities’ who flit from style to style, buoyed by the trend winds
Shabby festivals - may your poor sound, bad food and overpriced drinks die a slow death this year
Matthew Dear’s ‘Body Language’ - you’re a talented producer but don’t pretend you’re a DJ
Moritz Van Oswald falling ill
The glut of Carl Craig-a-like epic techno releases
The Ugly:
Dubfire’s ‘reinvention’ as a techno DJ/producer – go away and take your horribly formulaic music with you
Tinny sounding digital DJ sets – enough to make your ears bleed
MySpace - terrible designs and even worse layout makes me want to buy a fax
Laurent Garnier’s spectacular fall from grace
Bootlegs - for ripping off the artists and for the shops who stock them even though they know they’re bogus. Shame on you.
Contakt/Minus – for trying to be funny but for ending up looking like a bad, black-clad version of Zoolander
Promo emails for cookie cutter electro house and mnml reaching spam-like proportions
Dopplereffekt turning out to be Detroit electro’s very own Marcel Marceau
The Guardian’s music blog - has it got an inbuilt function that makes its writers catch on to music three years too late?
I think I haven't been following the news enough. Can you elaborate on Laurent Garnier and Dopplereffekt or link to the relevant posts?
I agree with almost everything except Ricardo Villalobos. The guy is on another level. But I have a feeling I won't be able to convince you.
Posted by: ilya | January 13, 2009 at 12:42 PM
yep, pretty much agree with everything there. one that needs to be added to for the 'good' but, of course, you can't say is your own output. top notch reflection and insight with sincerity. keep it up.
and thanks for the kind words on the mnml ssg series. we put a huge amount of effort into it and i think it paid off. now we've a big 2009 planned... very excited about some of the people who've agreed to do mixes for us.
Posted by: chrisdisco | January 13, 2009 at 01:26 PM
agreed!
hahaha, cookie cutter electro house :)
PR criticism was very hard in tech industry too. lots of spam, an example here http://bit.ly/obnX
Posted by: Pito | January 13, 2009 at 01:33 PM
>>Dopplereffekt turning out to be Detroit electro’s very own Marcel Marceau
A very delicate subject......
Posted by: Jay | January 13, 2009 at 03:29 PM
I can't make my mind up about villalobos, he has his occasional moments (his remix of sun electric's toninas being a notable example from 2008 of how his ambling tendency can satisfy). But too frequently his tracks are too sketchy in terms of ideas.
His vinyls are also ridiculously expensive. Everyone's blethering on and on about the shackleton remix on vasco but for the life of me I can't justify spending the fifteen notes it'll cost me for the sake of one track.
Cheers for a great year of writing, especially for articulating why old-fashioned ideas like paying artists for their work and continuing to buy vinyl are still important.
Posted by: clom | January 14, 2009 at 04:06 AM
Richard, can you elaborate on the 3 Redshape releases? I'm guessing 2 of them are Plonk and Blood in to Dust
Posted by: Russell | January 14, 2009 at 04:37 AM
Hi guys, thanks for all the comments.
@ Ilya - I have a few Villalobos records, including ‘What You say…’ (think the ep is called halma), the alcachofa album, abut nothing I have heard in a while has done anything whatsoever for me.
Re Garnier: I mean that he used to be a great, great dj, but he now plays rubbish and re dopplereffekt, let’s just say their live act would do villi manilli proud
@ Chris thanks for the props, it’s great that there are blogs like yours, ISM etc - really look forward to hearing more podcasts this year
@ Jay see above re dopplereffekt
@ Clom: Villalobos has his moments, but anything I heard this year was dull, dull, dull - glad you also enjoy the blog…
@ Russell: the third one is Robot on Music Man, different to plonk and blood into dust - all excellent records too
Posted by: Testindustries | January 14, 2009 at 09:44 AM
aw thanks, we <3 you too! ;)
on the real though, i hope you're back to banging it out on the regular here, it's always a treat when a new Test post pops up in googlereader!!!
Posted by: tom/pipecock | January 14, 2009 at 12:17 PM
more BAD I'm afraid, Road Records is due to close :(
I wonder how many Dublin shops will be left by the end of the year?
http://www.hotpress.com/news/5172149.html?page_no=1&show_comments=1
Posted by: gmos | January 16, 2009 at 08:15 AM
Love the bad list..Brilliant....
Posted by: Mark O Sullivan | January 22, 2009 at 02:21 PM